One particularly sad example is the P&J Oyster Company in New Orleans’ French Quarter, which has been able to stay open for 134 years but doesn’t look like it will survive two months of crude oil pumping up into the Gulf.

Says the owner of P&J, who has had to lay off his shuckers and resort to buying pre-shucked oysters from Alabama:

I don’t have any prospects to get any oysters — they closed one of the main areas where we get our oysters from… Barataria Basin is where P&J has made its name over the years, and that whole basin is now closed.

If P&J is unable to survive by selling the imported mollusks, it will have to close its doors indefinitely. It could be quite some time until the undersea oil gusher is capped and even longer before the currently closed oyster harvesting areas are deemed safe to reopen.